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Let's Talk

5G Game (Thought-o-gram) Prototype en eerste versie

English

The 5G game, also known as the ?Thought-o-gram? application had its first working prototype around July 2015. Using the methodology from the similarly named therapy tool game designers worked together with therapists to create a digital diary so adolescent clients can register their experiences in an interactive and playful fashion.

Both the practicioners and several clients have already used this version of the Thought-o-gram application in a controlled environment and were mostly positive about using it. They also gave several suggestions for improvement, the feedback provided was used in the latest 2016 version of the game.

How does the 5G game work?

The 5G game follows the exact same principles as the regular 5G methodology in therapy. It makes use of the 5 steps (Dutch 5G?s): gebeurtenis (event), gedachte (thoughts), gevoel? (feelings), gedrag (behaviour) and gevolg (consequence). Every step is associated with a different visual menu in the game where the user gets several choices to fully customize their experiences.

Gebeurtenis ( Event )

The first step in the 5G method is to describe the event that took place. In the paper variant this takes place by writing everything down on a piece of paper. For the 5G game the choice has been made to make it more visual than the paper version.

When filling in the 5G game the first thing the client can do is design one or more characters that were involved in the event. These characters are completely customizable, you can give them a name, assign a gender, age and choose their clothing styles. The next step involves swiping through several objects and illustrations of scenario?s that relate to the ?What?? question. The client can choose the object that matches closely to their given situation. The same goes for the ?Where?? question where the client tries to specify the location. He/she can choose between several illustrations of commonly used places, like at home or school. The designers acknowledge the fact that it?s hard to make an appropriate illustration for each and every scenario. For the cases where the illustrations are not specific enough the option is given to write down important missing details.

Gedachte (Thoughts)

The thoughts are of vital importance for the conventional 5G method, the same still holds true for the 5G game. This aspect of the therapy and the game turned out to be quite hard to visualise. The shear amount of variance between thoughts and not wanting to influence the clients thoughts by providing potentially distracting imagery lead to the decision to make this part of the application purely text based. The user needs to fill in what he/she was thinking in correspondence to the earlier described event.

Gevoel (Feelings)

The feelings in the 5G game are visual displayed using a so called 5 point scale. The user first makes a choice which one of the 5 basic emotions he or she experienced. He/she can choose out of: Angry, frightened, ?ashamed, sad or happy. Than based on the 5 point scale they can choose the severity of the experienced emotion. For all of the points on the scale there are visually matching facial expressions.

Gedrag (Behaviour)

Several 3D animations give the user the possibility to select a visual representation of their behaviour. The 3D animations are supported through short textual explanations of the animation and the users can supplement these texts to explain what they really did.

Gevolg (consequence)

The consequence is made up in a similar fashion like the event module of the 5G game. The content of the event step is initially copied and filled in when the user reaches the consequence step. The user is then permitted to make alterations and changes based on how they think their behaviour influenced the situation.